Analysing Gender in Performance

Description

Analysing Gender in Performance brings together the fields of Gender Studies and Performance Analysis to explore how contemporary performance represents and interrogates gender. This edited collection includes a wide range of scholarly essays, as well as artists’ voices and their accounts of their works and practices. The Introduction outlines the book’s key approaches to concepts in English language gender discourses and gender’s intersectionalities, and sets out the approaches to performance analysis and methods of research employed by the various contributors. The book focuses on performances from the Global North, staged over the past fifty years. Case studies are diverse, ranging from site-specific, dance theatre, speculative drag, installation, and music video performances to Mabou Mines, Churchill, Shakespeare and Ibsen. Contributors explore how gender intersects with sexuality, social class, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, culture and history. Read individually or in tension with one another, the essays confront the contemporary complexities of analysing gender in performance.   Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Analysing Gender in Performance: The Essays and Case Studies Bibliography Suggested Readings Gender and Its Intersections Feminisms Masculinities Disability Race and Racialization Trans* and Non-binary Class Nation Queer Performance Analysis and Research Methods Companies Performance Event Archival Research Scenography Bodies Casting Part I: 1970s–1990s Chapter 2: Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof: Choreographies of Gender and Costume Contexts of Bausch’s Dance Aesthetic Costume, Process, and Gestus Choreographing Gender and Repetition Power, Gender, and Costumes Costume’s Hauntings Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 3: Queer Becomings: The Ridiculous Theatrical Company’s Camille and Split Britches/Bloolips’ Belle Reprieve Charles Ludlam and Camille Revisiting the Ridiculous Ludlam and Camp In Performance Gender, Authority and Drag Split Britches/Bloolips’ Belle Reprieve Gender Unbecoming or Dragging Realism Conclusion: Camping the Canon Bibliography Chapter 4: Théâtre du Soleil and Ariane Mnouchkine: Living and Performing Gender Politics The Cartoucherie: Building: A Community Dissolving Hierarchies at Soleil Gender and the Oresteia Trilogy (Les Atrides) The Female Body and Soleil’s Performance Ethics and Aesthetics The Resistance to Theory Rethinking the Rehearsal Process Through the Lens of Gender Le Dernier Caravansérail: The Failure of the Fictional Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 5: Nora, Lucia, and Lear: Gender and Performance at Mabou Mines Lear: More Queen than Mother Lucia’s Stage Tall Dolls Bibliography Chapter 6: Freaks and Not Freaks: Theatre and the Making of Crip Identity What Is a Freak Show? The Last Freak Show Theatre Studies and Spectatorship Freaks and Not Freaks The Mutilated Administrative Disability When Is a Freak Not a Freak? Bibliography Chapter 7: Fires in the Mirror: Representations of Race, Gender and Class in Anna Deavere Smith’s Search for American Character Training and Re-training Writing ‘the Act of Speech’ Space, Acting and Performativity in Fires in the Mirror Bibliography Part II: Interruption: Artists Speak About Their Work Chapter 8: Black Women Performers: ‘I Don’t Want to Do Anything Else’ Biographies Bibliography Chapter 9: Trans-body-text: Exploring Performance Disruptions, a Discussion with Lazlo Pearlman Bibliography Chapter 10: Embodied and En-sited Performance: Reflections on Gender in Cooking Miss Julie/Miss Julie Cooks and March of Women Performing Housework: Women in the Vicinity of the Stage—A Shared Context for Both Case Studies by Kathleen Irwin Case Study: The Food Project: Cooking Miss Julie/Miss Julie Cooks by Kathleen Irwin Open the Road! Women Centre Stage: Case Study: March of Women, and MARCH by Anna Birch Conclusion Bibliography Chapter 11: A Manifesto of Living Self-portraiture (Identity, Transformation, and Performance) Working Principles and Inspirations Development of Practice1 Documentation, Artefacts, Aesthetics Projecting the Self Living Metaphor, Living Myth The Anti-discipline of Being A Line of Flight, a Ray of Light Conclusions Bibliography Part III: 2000s–2020s Chapter 12: Love and Information by Caryl Churchill, or Sexuality and Gender in Non-binary Times I II III Bibliography Chapter 13: Gender and the Aesthetics of Occupation: Making Room for Women’s Labour at the Theatre Preface: Taking Up Space Social Space as Social Labour Gender, Space, and Work at the Modern Theatre Get Me out of This Place! Where Else Might We Be Together? Bibliography Chapter 14: Performing Reproduction in an Age of Overproduction: Environmental Installations by Ai Hasegawa Bibliography Chapter 15: Loose Wrists: Camp and Intersectional Politics in the Works of Cazwell, Todrick Hall, and Big Freedia Cazwell Todrick Hall Big Freedia Conclusions Bibliography Chapter 16: Riotous Assembly: Performing Gender and Social Justice in thisispopbaby’s RIOT thisispopbaby: The Company Masculinities and the State Challenging Neoliberalism Power and Play Bibliography Chapter 17: From Gimmick Casting to Standard Practice: Re-gendering Shakespeare in Performance Julius Caesar in Performance Bibliography Chapter 18: ‘Women’s Business’: Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife and the Reclamation of Black Australian History Bibliography Chapter 19: Gender-Assemblages: The Scenographics of Sin Wai Kin Sin and Speculative Drag Gender-Assemblages Gender Scenographics Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index